Is 1.5C Global Warming Achievable?

After the deadlocks and poor outcomes that originated at previous meetings, the United Nations climate change conference held last year in Paris had the goal of tackling future climate change.

The historic agreement was widely met with cautious optimism.

Many climate researchers were pleased to see a more ambitious goal being attacked, but what a lot of people don’t understand is that really remaining within a 1.5℃ global warming limit is nigh on impossible.

There is apparently a strong disconnect between what the public and environment experts believe is attainable. The difficulty isn’t aided by the media’s apparent hesitation to treat it as an actual disaster.

In 2015, we saw worldwide average temps a little over 1℃ above pre-industrial levels, and 2016 may very likely be even warmer – even though we are in the grips of powerful El Niño (which makes global temperatures likely to be warmer). At this stage is we’re already well on track to reach 1.5℃ fairly soon.

With our present pollutants trajectory we are going to likely reach 1.5℃ next couple of decades (2024 is our best estimate). The less ambitious 2℃ objective would be surpassed not considerably after. This means we probably have just about 10 years before we break throughout the ambitious maximum 1.5℃ global-warming goal agreed upon.

University of Melbourne research team recently published charts demonstrating just how unrealistic the 1.5 degree target is, we’ve almost no time left to limit warming to 2℃, let alone 1.5℃.

This can be particularly true when you be aware that even if all greenhouse-gas emissions were stopped by today, we’d likely encounter about yet another half-degree of heating as the oceans “catch up with” the environment.

The public seriously under-estimates the amount of consensus among climate experts that human activities have triggered most of global-warming in current history. Similarly, there seems to be a lack of community awareness about just how urgent the issue is. Many people think we’ve lots of time to act-on climate change which the worst influences can be avoided by us by gradually and steadily lowering greenhouse gas pollutants over the the next couple of decades.

This really is not really the case. Drastic reductions to pollutants and fast are desired as soon as possible.

Though not yet viable on a large scale at this stage, we should also urgently find ways to remove greenhouse gases already released.

We are currently encountering dangerous effects of climate-change, with clear effects on culture and the environment – studies have demonstrated that the warming oceans are connected with the large-scale bleaching of the Great Buffer Reef in March 2016.

The regularity of extreme climatic conditions is already increasing. As we continue to warm the earth worse is almost surely set to buffet us.

It’s totally improbable we will reach the objectives set out in Paris, but it is essential that is done we can to limit global warming.

The more we do now, the less extreme the effects may be, regardless of targets.